The present invention relates to a scanning electron microscope and more particularly to a scanning electron microscope for suitably executing positioning to an inspection position on a semiconductor integrated circuit.
In correspondence to recent integration of semiconductor devices, a scanning electron microscope is used for observation and inspection of a refined circuit pattern. A scanning electron microscope (hereinafter referred to as CD-SEM) for measuring the size of a specific pattern used on the semiconductor manufacture line is promoted in automation so as to prevent raising of dust by a person in the same way as with other devices or to improve the processing capacity.
In order to automatically measure a target pattern on a wafer, a procedure of moving the observation view field to an approximate position by stage movement, precisely obtaining the measuring pattern position from the observation view field, moving the view field to the position, and measuring the pattern is used. To execute automatic operation, the aforementioned sequence is stored as a file (hereinafter referred to as a recipe file) and at the time of automatic operation, the recipe file is read and the sequence is executed automatically. To detect the precise position of the measuring pattern, the image part (hereinafter referred to as a template) including a characteristic pattern as a guide is registered beforehand and the position is decided by the distance from the pattern position detected by template matching.
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open 9-245709, an art for registering a template as a guide beforehand and deciding the target measuring pattern position by matching using the template is disclosed.